(Garth DeFelice could have been a contender if it weren’t for that bum hip.)

Imagine for a moment that it’s a hot July morning. You wake up in your McMansion located in a gated community or on a private road. You step into a bathroom, which appears to have been transplanted from a magazine, and take a shower. After you’re dressed, it’s time to have a modest breakfast consisting of no less than four eggs, three slices of bacon, three sausage links, a stack of hotcakes so scrumptious Paul Bunyan would be jealous, and all the freshly squeezed orange juice a man could want. Once you’ve had your fill, you hop in your Lamborghini and head to work… at BestBuy, or maybe it’s Staples. Oops, almost forgot; you went to college so you may have landed a comfortable desk job.

Yes sir, instead of heading to two-a-days at the stadium preparing for the upcoming season on the gridiron, you’re playing the role of the stiff with a 9-5’er to make ends meet. Hey man, it is after all “straight cash, homey” and every hour worked in that inglorious soul-crusher known as work is another chance to elude the repo man.

Do you know who you are? You are an American football player who used to play in the NFL. Since the lockout, things just haven’t been the same. We know it’s all about the Benjamins and all (unless your name is Herschel Walker), so here are a few, possibly former NFL players who might actually have a chance in MMA, unlike Jonnie Morton.

Here we are with Strikeforce’s first major event of the 2011, or as we like to call it, their first shot at fucking up the good things they did last year.

Although rumor has it Gus Johnson won’t be in the broadcast booth tonight, he promises that he’ll bring his MMA-retarded rhetoric back in time for the first round of the Strikeforce Heavyweight Grand Prix in February, despite the fact that HDNet has announced Michael Shiavello and Bas Rutten will be added to the announce team — at least for the prelims.

With no GuJo to screw up the broadcast and no feuds brewing between the Diaz’s and opponents they’ll likely never face, there’s a pretty good chance that this event could go off with out a hitch. The only thing that could knock this ship off course would be for Cyborg to upset Diaz and for Lawler to knock out Jacare.

And for the record, we WANTStrikeforce to succeed more than we want to see Justin Bieber fall down a flight of stairs, it’s just that they haven’t exactly given us a lot of indicators that they’re ready to go head-to-head with Zuffa’s Evil Empire (Just kidding, Dana. Ben doesn’t want to get fucked again.)

(Hmm..Guess they ran out of space for Cyborg and Gracie on the poster.)

Saturday’s Strikeforce event is the promotion’s first non-Challengers event of 2011. Unfortunately, it’s been toiling in the shadows of the much-anticipated Heavyweight Grand Prix and hasn’t received much in the way of coverage. There are quite a few reasons to tune in this weekend.

Here are five big ones.

Herschel Walker, Genetic FreakThough only a novice in the game of mixed martial arts, Hershel Walker is no stranger to high levels of competition. His athletic accolades read like a novel. College football Heisman trophy winner, All-Pro NFL running back, track and field star, black belt in Tae Kwon Do, Olympic bobsledder. Yes, Olympic bobsledder. And after all of this, Walker decides to throw his hat into the cage and try MMA. Did I mention he’s 48? Now, in MMA that may not seem special as we have our own version of a 48-year old wonder in Randy Couture, but Couture looks every year of 48. Walker, on the other hand, could pass for a man in his early 30s and has the physique that men in their athletic primes dream to attain. Herschel Walker, at 48, might be the greatest physical specimen to step foot in an MMA ring or cage…ever.

(Apologies if the vid takes awhile to load. You try squeezing all of Walker’s BS in to a simple embed code. VidProps: Shoot Media)

We’ve been pretty studiously ignoring Herschel Walker since his bout with Scott Carson got postponed back in November. Somewhere along the way we just got tired of the guy’s running patter. Even last week when the mainstream media grabbed hold of his offhand comment about trying to make a comeback to the NFL when he turns 50 and trumpeted it from the rooftops like it was some kind of actual news, we turned a deaf ear. For our money, 48-year-old dude wants to fight? No big deal. He’s semi-famous, so we gotta put him on the main card? We get it. For real though, the fact that Strikeforce has to go out and sign no-name opponents for the express purpose of getting beat up by Herschel Walker in 220-pound catchweight fights pretty much says it all about the legitimacy of his MMA career.

However, this latest video from the good people at Shoot Media – who in all honesty do pretty great work – sparked our interest. Mostly because it successfully falls in line with the standard Rich-Athlete-Makes-Sacrifices-to-Pursue-his-True-Passion clichés while still giving us a nod and a wink about what an odd, odd man we’re dealing with here. Among other dubious claims made in this vid, Walker says he was just a fat kid with a speech impediment from small town Georgia that no one thought would amount to squat. You know, until it turned out he was one of the greatest natural athletes of all time, rushed for over 3,000 yards in high school, became a national prep scholar-athlete of the year and went on to become maybe the greatest college running back in history. Still, those early years were pretty touch-and-go.

With heavyweight Herschel Walker forced out of his planned December 4 Strikeforce bout with WEC veteran Scott Carson due to a deep cut he sustained training with Daniel Cormier on Friday, a light heavyweight scrap between usual middleweights Lucas Lopes and Benji Radach has been put together at the last minute to help fill in the dwindling Henderson vs. Babalu fight card.

Earlier in the week yet-to-be matched up Jesse Finney, who was originally slated to face Scott Smith before "Hands of Steel" was instead matched up with Strikeforce newcomer Paul Daley, was forced to bow out of the event due to an eye injury.

Sources close to the situation told CagePotato.com Thursday that Lopes (19-10), who is one of Finney’s training partners and holds a win over UFC standout Thiago Alves, has agreed to face Radach on the card. Radach (20-5), whose record includes wins over Murilo Rua and Gerald Harris, hasn’t fought since being knocked out by Smith last year, but he is a crafty veteran Lopes would regret taking lightly.

Another source we spoke to informed us that Strikeforce was unable to find a suitable opponent in time for Carson, so the 4-1 veteran whose return to MMA after a nine-year absence in June was spoiled by a first round knock out by Lorenz Larkin.

(Give Cofield credit, he isn’t afraid to just put it out there and say, ‘Why are you doing this?’ in the tone of a man trying to talk some sense into his alcoholic cousin.)

Sometimes I wonder if Jose Canseco is one of the dumbest former pro athletes out there, or if he is so brilliant that he merely seems dumb to those of us who can’t fully grasp the depth of his wisdom. Listening to the guy explain why we have wars and how those wars are just the large scale version of the petty criticism we perpetrate against one another on a daily basis, I could feel my mind slowing being blown into millions of tiny pieces. Then he said that Herschel Walker’s insistence on not fighting him was a “negotiating ploy,” and I was forced to completely disregard my theory of Canseco as an unappreciated genius.

You see, unlike Canseco, Walker is not desperate for cash and attention. The guy donated his Strikeforce payday to a church. Typically, guys who are fighting for charity do not engage in negotiating ploys to drive their price tag up. If they wanted their charity to have more money, they’d just give it to them personally. If they didn’t have that kind of money to give, they probably wouldn’t be fighting for charity.

Is any of this getting through, Jose? Are you even still reading? You became distracted by a dog with a puffy tail midway through the first paragraph, didn’t you? You know what, just forget it. You keep after Herschel Walker. After all, you’ve been doing this longer than him.